Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article addresses a lack of alignment between the material interests and economic preferences of the working class. It argues that the link between class interest and support for specific economic policies that benefit the working class becomes stronger when it is made clear that the policy targets the rich. Working‐class support for the repealed and unpopular inheritance tax in Norway is chosen as a hard test of this argument. Employing two straightforward survey experiments, this article demonstrates that clarifying who will pay the tax raises support in general and is especially important for ensuring the support of the working class. Further analysis shows that class differences, when the tax is explicitly redistributive, can be accounted for by general redistributive orientation. Additionally, differences in education levels partly explain why clearer class differences in tax support are not observed. This study underscores the importance of considering both the demand and supply sides when examining the economic preferences of social classes and highlights that clearly formulating who pays the tax is crucial for garnering support from working‐class voters.

AbstractConventional wisdom claims that rural voters are politically mobilized by right‐wing and culturally conservative forces, while urban voters are left‐leaning and have progressive cultural views. Leveraging original survey data from Norway, our work challenges this dichotomy. We build on cleavage theory and recent research on place identitiesto develop a latent measure of rural attachment. Using regression analysis, we investigate how well this measure maps onto five different cultural attitudes, left‐ right ideology, and partisan voting. The findings show that people with rural identities are not more right‐wing, reluctant towards immigration, or anti‐environmental than their urban counterparts. Instead, the geographic cleavage relates to dissatisfaction with the way the central government treats rural areas, resistance to the EU, and voting for the agrarian Center Party. The findings from Norway therefore show that it is possible to mobilize rural identifiers without disparaging immigrants or adopting other radical‐right stances. Our work suggests that the supply of political parties plays a decisive role in how rural identities are activated and contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the urban‐rural divide in advanced, multi‐party democracies.